A telephone stand of the sort described commonly has an enclosure structure comprising a deeply hollow, generally thin-walled molded plastic open-bottomed upper housing and a base plate providing a bottom closure for such housing. The housing mounts the keypad or other dial device for the set and, to the rear of such keypad, has a cradle and associated elements whereby, when the handset of the set is first removed from and then returned to the cradle, a line switch in the stand is actuated to be, respectively, in OFF-HOOK and on ON-HOOK condition. Also included in the stand are various other components for effecting operation of the set.
In the past, it was often the case that a majority of such components were mounted on the stand's base plate and connected in circuit through a complex of irregularly aligned insulated wire leads extending in various directions from locations on or adjacent to the base plate to other near or remote locations. Because, however, of the cost of such leads, the numerous assembling steps required to effect their wiring and the increased risk (due to the complexity and irregular aligning of such wiring) in making an error therein, the cost of manufacture of such telephone stands has been substantially more expensive than is desirable.
An alternative proposed in the prior art to mounting components of the set on the base plate is to mount such components elsewhere in the stand and to connect them in circuit by the use of a printed wiring board disposed within the stand and on which the wiring for the components has been pre-established, the printed conductors on the board replacing the previously used insulated wire leads, and the number of assembling steps required being reduced.
Thus, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,394,545 issued July 19, 1983 in the name of Frances S. Doyle et al., and assigned to the assignee thereof, discloses a repertory dialer adjunct for a telephone set in which various of the components for the set are mounted on the underside of a rigid printed wiring board disposed against the underside of a keyboard assembly on the inside of the upper face of the upper housing for the repertory dialer. The pushbuttons of the assembly protrude through holes formed in such face. The board and assembly are secured in relation to such face by deflectable latch elements extending downwardly from the face and having catch surfaces adapted, after deflection of such elements (by passage of such board past such catch surfaces) to spring back and underlie the board so as to latch it in place. That expedient of coupling the board and assembly to the housing only by deflectable latching elements has, however, the disadvantage that such coupling may not be rugged enough to withstand failure when the repertory dialer is subjected to the stringent reliability tests which telephone sets are required to meet as, for example, "drop" tests.
As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,627,930 issued December, 1971 in the name of W. R. Tolman, and assigned to the assignee hereof, discloses a dial-in telephone handset in which the central region of a flexible elongated printed wiring board or "flex" is sandwiched between the back cover and the side cover of a dial assembly for the handset. The two end regions of the "flex" are extended out on opposite sides of such covers, and these two end regions carry, respectively, a transmitter housing connector cup and a receiver housing connector cup. The combination of such dial assembly, its covers, the "flex" and such two cups is adapted to be mounted in the top plastic housing of the handset so that the keys of the dial assembly project through an aperture in such housing, and so that those two cups will connect the printed wiring on the "flex" with, respectively, a transmitter and receiver contained in the housing.
The mounting of such combination in the housing. is effected by fastening screws passing through brackets on the side cover of the assembly and then into the housing, the screws being oriented to have their heads on the inner side of the brackets and their shanks extending from such heads into the plastic housing material. Such orientation of the screws creates the difficulty, however, that, since the housing is, for the most part, thin-walled, if it were attempted without more to secure the screws in the housing's plastic material, that material would not be thick enough for the threaded shanks of the screws to get a good "bite" on such material.
To overcome such difficulty, the Tolman handset utilizes the expedient of supplementing the thin-walled shell of its top housing with special plastic support posts integral with and projecting inward from such shell to receive the shanks of the mentioned screws in threaded holes in the posts. The posts are long enough to accommodate much of the lengths of the screw shanks and, thus, provide a rugged coupling between the housing and the mentioned combination. The use of that expedient is, however, wasteful of plastic material, requires a more complex mold for the housing then would otherwise be required, and is otherwise costly.